First Meeting of UDOT Employee Advisory Council

In August, I announced a number of changes the leadership team would be implementing to better recognize our employees and their concerns. Based on feedback from surveys and focus groups earlier this year, we understood that our employees felt we could improve on providing dialogue between employees and leadership.

As a result of what we heard, we have created an Employee Advisory Council (EAC), which includes representatives from every group and region who will meet with Shane Marshall and me each quarter. The EAC will provide a direct avenue for employees to share concerns, ideas and feedback with the leadership team.

The EAC met for the first time on Oct. 3, and based on the number of topics we discussed, we decided to increase the length of our meetings from one and a half hours to two. I am excited to hear so many ideas and topics from our employees that can help make our organization even better.

During our discussion, the EAC decided to make all our meeting minutes available here on the blog, so all employees can be aware of the issues and questions we address. Also available is the full roster of EAC members, so if you have a question or concern you can pass it along for discussion at our next meeting.

Some of the topics we discussed were:

Employee Morale – Increase recognition for the good work being done by our employees.

Performance Recognition – Promote and expand recognition program, which employees feel is not consistent or as robust as it could be.

Outsourcing – Address the concern that the amount of work given to consultants threatens job security for UDOT employees. Employees will not lose jobs because of outsourcing.

Policy Explanations – Provide information about the reason(s) for policy changes instead of just announcing that change has occurred.

Market Comparability Adjustments (MCAs) – Give more background and context with the annual MCA report from Human Resources so it is easier to understand.

Employee Communication – Improve communication by offering more one-on-one access to the leadership team, for example by conducting regular visits to maintenance.

These are just highlights, but more detailed notes are available in the minutes. I encourage you to download and read the more detailed version for this meeting and those that follow. The next meeting has been scheduled for January, and all employees will receive an email from me as soon as those minutes are available.

We hope that all employees will engage the EAC and take part in our continual effort to improve as an organization. I look forward to hearing from you!